Crusade's over!

[Oshyan]

No need for atmo or clouds for the "sparkle", you just need a bright enough pixel (direct light source, reflection, whatever).

- Oshyan

[inkydigit]

Super cool stuff Hannes!

[Jo Kariboo]

Very nice. I like the light and contrast on the pictures!

[Hannes]

Well, atmospheric bloom didn't do anything here as far as I can see. Maybe there aren't enough bright pixels...

[Hannes]

I created some more riders and encountered another problem, that was mentioned before some time ago I guess.
The rider here is partially lit by the sun. The shadow looks jagged and nasty. I didn't notice that before, but in my original image you can see something similar on the forehead of the horse.
Switching off smooth normals produces smooth shadows, but of course the model looks a bit facetted.
I searched the forum, but couldn't find a solution. I played with all settings in the render subdivision settings, tried displacement vs. raytrace, switched off displacement entirely, nothing solved the problem.
Is this a known error, or is there a workaround?

[Kadri]

Try exporting the object with different smoothing angles from Max or Poseray Hannes.
Using  "Recalculate normals" in Poseray might help.

You don't have displacement on the object i think?

[Hannes]

Using  "Recalculate normals" in Poseray might help.

You don't have displacement on the object i think?

Kadri, thanks for the tip!!! First I thought, there has to be another solution! But your way was a piece of cake. I imported the object back from Poseray and copied and pasted the whole shader network from the previously created TGOs. Done!!
Great!!

[Dune]

No life is possible without Poseray!

[Hannes]

No life is possible without Poseray!

I've just learnt that lesson!!

[Kadri]

Matt said in a thread that he will maybe add sometime in the future such a feature (normal calculation-changing) to Terragen.
Not sure how high that is in his "to do list" .

[Hannes]

Matt said in a thread that he will maybe add sometime in the future such a feature (normal calculation-changing) to Terragen.
Not sure how high that is in his "to do list" .

That would be indeed a cool feature!

[Hannes]

As I wrote I created some more riders (basically the same model, but some with mirrored horses and different textures), and applied another bump map for the tree's leaves, added another Quixel object (the rock to the right) and rendered the whole image with a contrast value of 0.45, which makes the image even darker, but in postwork I increased the gamma and the contrast even more. I like the result so far.

[Kadri]

Looks good Hannes.

But it is you so i have some nitpicking
Even if they aren't (are they?)  they look too close to each other, nearly overlapping.
I would try to place the far away ones a little more according the road too.
The white horses do look ok to me (the right one not so much).
But i can feel that the brown one isn't quite right lighted.
Have you played with the gamma settings etc. too much probably?

[yossam]

I was going to say the same Kadri.............and for some reason or my eyes are failing me, the horses and riders look comped into the scene. 

[Jo Kariboo]

I prefer the latter. With the addition of extra jumper, the composition is more dynamic. Perhaps one feels more in the face of the right rider effects "dodging"? in post-production. Anyway it's a very nice picture!